Teaching Assistant Intern, Cognitive Neuroscience

Invited back to teach the course I had taken the summer before.

Program: UC Berkeley Academic Talent Development Program, Secondary Division
Role: Teaching Assistant Intern, Cognitive Neuroscience
Dates: June – July 2025 · 7 hours a week
Students: 30+ ninth- to twelfth-graders

7lessons built and taught
30+students
2 hrsper brain dissection
7 hrsa week

How it happened

I took the course in summer 2024 and finished with an A+. The program faculty invited me back the next summer to help teach it.

What I taught

Seven 30-minute lessons, each built from a college-level text (Ward’s The Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience) into Canva slides I designed myself: the visual cortex, the split-brain phenomenon, neuroplasticity, phantom limb syndrome, dreams and the sleeping brain, the gut-brain connection, and consciousness.

The rest of the job

Led two-hour lamb-brain dissections, teaching the major structures and what each one does.
Guided 30+ students through in-class assignments and projects.
Graded the weekly writing assignments.
Held biweekly office hours, 15 to 30 minutes at a time, for one-on-one help.

Photos

Afrah Nazar in blue gloves holding a lamb brain over a dissection tray in a classroom — A lamb brain in hand, in the ATDP cognitive-neuroscience classroom at UC Berkeley.